World War II was the largest and most violent armed conflict in the history of
mankind. However, the half century that now separates us from that conflict has
exacted its toll on our collective knowledge. While World War II continues to
absorb the interest of military scholars and historians, as well as its veterans,
a generation of Americans has grown to maturity largely unaware of the political,
social, and military implications of a war that, more than any other, united us
as a people with a common purpose.

Highly relevant today, World War II has much to teach us, not only about the
profession of arms, but also about military preparedness, global strategy, and
combined operations in the coalition war against fascism. During the next several
years, the U.S. Army will participate in the nation's 50th anniversary commemoration
of World War II. The commemoration will include the publication of various materials
to help educate Americans about that war. The works produced will provide great
opportunities t learn about and renew pride in an Army that fought so magnificently
in what has been called "the mighty endeavor."

World War II was waged on land, on sea, and in the air over several diverse
theaters of operation for approximately six years. The following essay is one
of a series of campaign studies highlighting those struggles that, with their
accompanying suggestions for further readings, are designed to introduce you
to one of the Army's significant military feats from that war.

This brochure was prepared in the U.S. Army Center of Military History by Charles
R. Anderson. I hope this absorbing account of that period will enhance your
appreciation of American achievements during World War II.

M.P.W. Stone

Secretary of the Army

For sale by the U.S. Government Printing Office, Superintendent of Documents,
Mail Stop: SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-9328

ISBN 0-16-038104-5

GUADALCANAL

7 August 1942-21 February 1943

On 7 December 1941, Imperial Japanese forces turned their war on the Asian
mainland eastward and southward into the Pacific with simultaneous attacks on
Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Wake, Guam, Hong Kong, and the Malay Peninsula.
The rapid southward advance of Japanese armies and naval task forces in the
following months found Western leaders poorly prepared for war in the Pacific.
Nevertheless, they conferred quickly and agreed that, while maintaining the
"German first" course they had set against the Axis, they also had to blunt
Japanese momentum and keep open lines of communication to Australia and New
Zealand. As the enemy closed on those two island democracies, the Allies scrambled
to shore up defenses, first by fortifying the Malay Barrier, and then, after
Japanese smashed through that line, by reinforcing an Australian drive north
across New Guinea. To make this first Allied offensive in the Pacific more effective,
the Americans mounted a separate attack from a different direction to form a
giant pincers in the Southwest Pacific. This decision brought American forces
into the Solomon Islands and U.S. Army troops onto the island of Guadalcanal.

Strategic Setting

During a series of conferences dating from January 1941 the combined ground, sea,
and air chiefs of staff of the United States and the United Kingdom discussed
strategies to defeat the Axis Powers and listed the priorities that should guide
their efforts toward that end. Although they conferred as allies, the two Atlantic
partners had to refer to themselves as Associated Powers while the United States
remained neutral. As the major decision of these conferences, the Associated Powers
agreed on a Germany-first strategy: the anti-Axis coalition would concentrate
on the defeat of Nazi Germany and Italy before turning its collective war-making
power against Japan. Until the European Axis partners surrendered, the Associated
Powers would mount only limited offensives in the Pacific to contain the Japanese.
Decisions supportive of the Germany-first priority included a division of the
world into areas of military responsibility reflecting the respective military
potential of the major powers in various geographical areas. The British would
concentrate their efforts in western Europe and the Mediterranean theaters, while
the United States would carry the burden of limited offensives in the Pacific.

On 30 March 1942, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff made a further division
of responsibility for the War and Navy Departments. The U.S. Navy assumed operational
responsibility for the vast Pacific Ocean Areas and gave the new command to
Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet since shortly
after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The U.S. Army took operational control of
the Southwest Pacific Area, assigning the command to General Douglas MacArthur,
recently ordered from the Philippines to Australia. MacArthur's new command
encompassed the seas and archipelagos south of Formosa and the Carolines, east
of the Malay Peninsula, and west of New Caledonia, an area including the Philippines,
the Netherlands East Indies, Australia, and New Guinea. On 20 April the Joint
Chiefs established a subdivision of the Navy's Pacific Ocean Areas command -
the South Pacific Area, under Vice Adm. Robert L. Ghormley - which included
New Zealand, important island bases at the end of the South Pacific ferry route
from Hawaii, and the Solomons, a former British protectorate only 500 miles
east of New Guinea. Ghormley had the mission of blocking the Japanese before
they cut the South Pacific ferry route and severed Australia and New Zealand
from the United States. The line between MacArthur's Southwest Pacific Area
command and Ghormley's South Pacific Area command divided the Solomons at a
point 1,100 miles northeast of Australia. Obviously, any operations in defense
of Australia or New Zealand and the South Pacific ferry route would depend on
close Army-Navy cooperation.

The Allies mounted their first attempt to stop the Japanese at the Malay Barrier,
a 3,500-mile-long line from the Malay Peninsula through the Netherlands East
Indies and ending in the British Solomon Islands. The four nations contributing
men and arms to the Malay Barrier defense established the American-British-Dutch-Australian
Command (ABDACOM) to direct their effort. Though unsuccessful - the Japanese
punched through the Malay Barrier in January 1942 - ABDACOM gave the Allies
valuable experience in coalition warfare and combined operations.

As Japanese forces rolled on south and east toward Australia, it became obvious
to the Allies and especially to the United States, the only nation still able
to mount meaningful opposition in the Pacific, that more than token forces would
have to be deployed to accomplish even the modest goal of containing the enemy.
A convoy sent to reinforce the Philippines but diverted to Australia when the
Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor had brought 4,600 air forces and artillery troops
to Australia. Four thousand of these men still awaited deployment. In January
Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall had dispatched another reinforcement
to Australia - this one numbering 16,000 men - and placed it under command of
Brig. Gen. Alexander M. Patch. Combined with American forces already in Australia,
this force would form the nucleus of an infantry division and air wing.

The collapse of ABDACOM did not stop dispatch of American forces to the South
Pacific. In the early months of 1942 a number of separate Army ground units
shipped out for New Caledonia, and the first complete division - the 37th Infantry
Division, a National Guard unit from Ohio boarded transports for the Fiji Islands.
In June the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff began planning an independent American
offensive, and at the same time deployed Army Air Forces and Marine Corps air
squadrons to support the campaign. In late June and early July the 1st Marine
Division arrived at Wellington, New Zealand. The increase in Army troop strength
led the War Department to organize a new command for the imminent operations:
U.S. Army Forces in the South Pacific Area, commanded by Maj. Gen. Millard F.
Harmon.

While the Americans struggled to send enough men and arms to protect Australia,
the Japanese rapidly consolidated their gains in the South Pacific. The Imperial
Japanese Navy exercised theater control in the South Pacific through its Southeastern
Fleet, headquartered at Rabaul. The Imperial Japanese Army organized its troops
in the area into the Seventeenth Army, commanded by Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake.
Imperial forces built naval port facilities, leveled land for airfields, and
fortified jungled hill masses to hold the islands they had taken and to support
subsequent operations on the march to Australia. Each island group had at least
one strongpoint; some had several. Large bases were built in the Palaus and
the Carolines and at Rabaul in the Bismarcks. Smaller bases held the Marshalls
and the Gilberts, in addition to New Britain and New Ireland in the Bismarcks
and Buka, Bougainville, and Guadalcanal in the Solomons. By the middle of 1942
the American Joint Chiefs faced options of dubious merit: they could find the
Japanese in almost any direction they turned.

Naval action in the spring and summer of 1942 gave American ground forces and
opening into the South Pacific. In the Battles of the Coral Sea in May and Midway
in June, the U.S. Navy seriously damaged the Japanese fleet. In those two engagements
the Japanese lost five carriers and hundreds of aircraft and their pilots, while
the

American loss of two aircraft carriers was also significant. Although the Coral
Sea and Midway engagements did not give the Americans undisputed access to the
South Pacific, they did bring the naval balance of forces close enough that
the Americans could realistically consider an amphibious operation.

In this more favorable tactical situation, the Joint Chiefs of Staff in July
proposed a two-pronged assault, one in a northwesterly direction up the Solomon
Islands, and the other from Port Moresby on the south coast of New Guinea north
across that island. Of all enemy strongpoints in the South Pacific, that on
Guadalcanal appeared most threatening because it lay closest to Australia and
to the South Pacific ferry route. If the Americans were going to blunt the Japanese
advance into the South Pacific, Guadalcanal would have to be the place, for
no other island stood between the Solomons and Australia.

Operations

Ninety miles long on a northwest-southeast axis and an average of twenty-five
miles wide, Guadalcanal presented forbidding terrain of mountains and dormant
volcanoes up to eight thousand feet high, steep ravines and deep streams, and
a generally even coastline with no natural harbors. With the south shores protected
by miles of coral reefs, only the north central coast presented suitable invasion
beaches. There the invading Japanese forces had landed in July, and there the
Americans would have to follow. Once ashore, invaders found many streams running
north out of the mountains to inhibit east-west movement. A hot, humid climate
supported malaria and dengue-carrying mosquitoes and posed continuous threat of
fungal infection and various fevers to the unacclimated. The Melanesian population
of the island was generally loyal to Westerners.

Prior to the American landing in early August, the Japanese had not tried to
fortify all terrain features, but concentrated on the north plain area and prominent
peaks. They had built an airfield at Lunga Point and many artillery positions
in nearby hills. At 1,514 feet, Mount Austen stood as the most important objective
to anyone trying to hold or take the north coast. By August General Hyakutake
had a force of some 8,400 men, most in the 2d Division, to hold the island and
build airfields. Japanese naval superiority in the theater assured him of sufficient
troop inflow - the 38th Division would land later - to realize his plans for
a two-division corps.

In its early stages, the Guadalcanal Campaign was primarily a Navy and Marine
Corps effort. Directly subordinate to Admiral Nimitz, Admiral Ghormley commanded
both Navy and Army units. On the Navy side of the joint command, Maj. Gen. Alexander
A. Vandegrift (USMC) commanded the 1st Marine Division, the assault landing
force. Army troops committed to Guadalcanal came under command of Maj. Gen.
Millard F. Harmon, as Commanding General, South Pacific.

On the morning of 7 August 1942, the 1st Marine Division followed heavy naval
preparatory fires and landed across the north beaches east of the Tenaru River.
In a three-month struggle marked by moderate battlefield but high disease casualties
and accompanied by sea battles that first interrupted and finally secured resupply
lines, the marines took the airfield and established a beachhead roughly six
miles wide and three miles deep.

On 13 October the 164th Infantry, the first Army unit on Guadalcanal, came
ashore to reinforce the marines and took a 6,600-yard sector at the east end
of the American perimeter. Commanded by Col. Bryant E. Moore, the 164th had
come through the South Pacific ferry route in January to New Caledonia. There,
the 164th joined the 182d Infantry and 132d Infantry Regiments, in addition
to artillery, engineer, and other support units, to form a new division called
the "Americal," a name derived from the words America and New Caledonia. Until
the Americal commander, Maj. Gen. Alexander M. Patch, and other units of the
division arrived, the 164th would fight with the marines.

The newest American unit on Guadalcanal, the 164th moved into the southeast
corner of the perimeter. On the night of 23 October, Moore and his troops heard
the Japanese begin their attempt to retake the Lunga Point airfield, renamed
Henderson Field by the marines. Two nights later the Japanese hit the 164th,
running out of the dark jungles yelling "Banzai," throwing grenades, and firing
every weapon they could carry. Despite armor, artillery, air, and naval support,
the Japanese could achieve no more than temporary breakthroughs at isolated
points. The men of the 164th put up a much stiffer defense than the Japanese
expected of a green unit, and with the marines repulsed the enemy with heavy
losses while losing 26 killed, 52 wounded, and 4 missing. Once the enemy attack
failed, Vandegrift had four experienced regiments manning a secure line.

General Vandegrift now moved into the second phase of his operations on Guadalcanal:
pushing out his perimeter far enough so that Japanese artillery could not reach
Henderson Field and overrunning the Seventeenth Army headquarters at Kokumbona,
nine miles west of the airfield. On the morning of 1 November, following naval,
air, and field artillery fire, Marine units began the attack both east and west.

On the 4th the Army's 1st Battalion, 164th Infantry, joined the western attack,
while the 2d and 3d Battalions, 164th, moved to the eastern front. The Army
battalions assisted in a major victory during 9-12 November when they trapped
against the sea 1,500 enemy troops who had just landed at Koli Point. Soldiers
and marines killed half the enemy force in a twoday fight; the rest escaped
into the jungle toward Mount Austen, six miles southwest of Henderson Field.

Vandegrift suddenly stopped his attacks in mid-November when he learned the
Japanese would soon attempt a major reinforcement via the "Tokyo Express," the
almost nightly run of supply-laden destroyers to the island. As expected, the
enemy transports came, bearing the 38th Division for General Hyakutake. In the
four-day naval Battle of Guadalcanal, the U.S. Navy so seriously damaged the
task force that the enemy never again tried a large-unit reinforcement. Only
4,000 troops, of 10,000, reached land, and the 38th Division had to function
as a large but underequipped regiment.

The attack toward Kokumbona resumed on 18 November with the 164th Infantry,
two battalions of the newly arrived 182d Infantry, and a Marine regiment. After
advancing only one mile against strong opposition, the attack stalled on the
25th. The 164th Infantry alone lost 117 killed and 625 wounded or sick. Rather
than continue the costly push into the jungle, American commanders decided to
await reinforcements.

But rather than receiving reinforcements, the Americans lost effective combat
units in December. Vandegrift's battle-hardened but diseasewracked 1st Marine
Division boarded ships for a much-deserved reconstitution, leaving General Patch
in command of all American units on the island. Despite this temporary reduction,
Patch wanted to mount a limited offensive before the enemy strengthened positions
any further. He planned to take Mount Austen to secure both Henderson Field
and his left flank for the next push toward Kokumbona. Forces available for
the Mount Austen operation included the complete Americal Division, the 147th
Infantry, two Marine regiments, and four field artillery battalions.

Patch gave the mission of taking Mount Austen to the 132d Infantry, which had
arrived on the island on 8 December. With its 3d Battalion in the lead, the
132d kicked off the assault the morning of the 17th. The battalion had plenty
of artillery support on call but was easily pinned down in the foothills by
rifle and machine-gun fire. On the 19th the battalion commander led a patrol
forward in an attempt to locate enemy positions; he found one machine-gun position
which killed him and scattered his patrol. The 132d thrashed through the jungle
for five more days before locating the main enemy strongpoint, called the Gifu

position after a Japanese prefecture. Inside the Gifu, five hundred troops
manned over forty log-reinforced bunkers arranged in a horseshoe on the west
side of Mount Austen. During the last ten days of 1942 the 132d hammered Gifu
repeatedly, making little progress at a cost of 34 killed and 279 other casualties,
mostly sick. Finally, on 1-2 January 1943, the 1st and 3d Battalions attacked
from the north while the 2d Battalion swung around and attacked from the south
to overrun most of the Gifu strongpoint and secure the west slopes of Mount
Austen. Now the Americans could move against Kokumbona without fear of enemy
observation or fire from the rear. In the 22-day battle for Mount Austen the
132d Infantry had killed between 400 and 500 Japanese but in the process lost
112 killed and 268 wounded.

During the last weeks of 1942 and the first weeks of 1943 the Americans strengthened
their toehold on Guadalcanal by reorganizing and bringing in fresh troops. On
2 January General Harmon activated a new headquarters, XIV Corps, and assigned
General Patch to its command. The 25th Infantry Division and the rest of the
2d Marine Division joined the Americal Division on the island to fill out a
three-division corps in preparation for a January offensive. Patch now planned
to destroy the Japanese on Guadalcanal rather than simply to push them farther
away from the Henderson Field perimeter. With the newly arrived units, he could
expect to make more progress than in the previous two months. Japanese troop
strength on the island had peaked at 30,000 in November, but then fell to about
25,000 in December. With supplies from the Tokyo Express steadily falling and
malaria casualties rising, General Hyakutake had no choice but to scale down
his objectives.

On 10 January XIV Corps began its first offensive of the new year, with Patch
pointing almost all of his units west. Maj. Gen. J. Lawton Collins' 25th Division
took over the Gifu-Mount Austen area and moved west across the Matanikau River
against a hill mass called Galloping Horse after its appearance from the air.
The 2d Marine Division tied in with Collins' right flank and advanced west along
the coast toward Kokumbona. Most of the Americal Division took over the Henderson
Field perimeter, except the 182d Infantry, one battalion of the 132d Infantry,
and division artillery, all of which supported the corps attack.

Col. William A. McCulloch's 27th Infantry led the assault on Galloping Horse
at first light on 10 January. In support, six field artillery battalions tried
an innovation Collins hoped would deny the enemy the usual warning given when
rounds fired from the nearest battery struck before those of the main concentration,
allowing troops in the open to seek cover and move equipment. Called "time on
target," the technique depended on careful firing sequencing so that all initial
projectiles from whatever direction and distance landed at the same time. Thereafter
the batteries would fire into the kill zone continuously but at irregular intervals
through an extended period, thirty minutes in this case. The technique seemed
to be effective, for soldiers later advancing through such zones found little
opposition.

The 1st and 3d Battalions led off the 27th Infantry attack, hitting the Galloping
Horse at the forelegs and tail. In the early hours the battalions had more trouble
with the steep cliffs, deep ravines, and thick jungle of the island. As they
moved up the slopes of objectives they found stiff enemy resistance from hidden
bunkers. Expecting fire from rifles, machine guns, and small mortars, the Americans
were somewhat surprised that the Japanese had managed to muscle the much heavier
37-mm. and 70-mm. pieces atop the sharp hills. The 1st

Battalion made better progress than the 3d, but by the second day both units
experienced another problem: a shortage of water. The Americans had expected
that the many streams on mountainous Guadalcanal would provide water inland
and were surprised to find most stream beds dry. The need to transport water
threatened to slow operations seriously.

At the end of the second day the 3d Battalion slumped into a night position
more than 800 meters short of the head of Galloping Horse, exhausted by enemy
resistance and water shortage. Colonel McCulloch pulled the unit back for a
rest and moved the 2d Battalion up to continue the advance along the body of
the Horse. Company E soon stalled against a ridgeline between Hills 52 and 53.
For the men involved, the battle now evolved into intense struggles between
fire teams and individuals in the hot jungle and steep ravines.

Capt. Charles W. Davis saw only one way to end the stalemate. Taking four men
and all the grenades they could carry, he led his party

in a crawl up to the enemy strongpoint. The Japanese threw grenades first,
but they failed to explode. Davis and his men threw theirs, then charged before
the enemy could recover from the blasts. Firing rifles and pistols into the
position, Davis and his men finished off the stub-born enemy, and Company E
swept up the ridge. For his initiative Davis was awarded the Medal of Honor.

As if in reward, a heavy rain began shortly after Company E took the ridge.
Their thirst relieved, the men of the 27th Infantry prepared to take the rest
of the Galloping Horse. After Colonel McCulloch put the fire of three artillery
battalions on Hill 53, the head of the Horse, company-size assaults from two
directions swept forward through the feeble resistance of starving and sickly
Japanese. By the afternoon of 13 January McCulloch's men held the entire Galloping
Horse hill mass.

On the same day the 27th Infantry assaulted Galloping Horse, the 1st and 3d
Battalions of another 25th Division regiment, the 35th, swung around the Gifu
strongpoint and moved west against another hill mass, the Sea Horse. The regimental
commander, Col. Robert B. McClure, opened the attack by sending his 3d Battalion
toward Hill 43, the head of the Sea Horse. For the first seven hours of the
attack the troops had more trouble with the terrain than the enemy, until Company
K tried to cross a stream between the head and body of the Sea Horse. Anxious
to continue the advance, the Americans waded into the water before posting adequate
fire cover. With the company split over the two sides of the stream, Japanese
machine gunners began firing on the inviting target below. Fortunately for the
Americans, two men in the company saved the situation. Sgt. William G. Fournier
and T5g. Lewis Hall turned a machine gun on the enemy, now mounting an infantry
rush on the disorganized Americans, and broke up the attack before receiving
mortal wounds. For saving Company K from disaster, Fournier and Hall were awarded
posthumous Medals of Honor.

After Company K regrouped, the 3d Battalion attack picked up momentum. By nightfall
on 10 January the Americans had half the Sea Horse surrounded, and Colonel McClure
began relieving 3d Battalion companies with those from the 1st Battalion. The
next day the attack resumed against weak resistance. When the Japanese massed
machine-gun fire on the 3d Battalion, the 1st Battalion rejoined the attack,
and the two units drove the enemy completely off the Sea Horse by late afternoon
on the 11th. In four days of combat 25th Division troops had taken two important
objectives in their January offensive. To consolidate his gains in the Galloping
Horse-Sea Horse area, General Collins brought forward his last maneuver regiment-the
161st Infantry. During the third week of January the fresh regiment fought several
sharp firefights to clear isolated stream beds and ravines between the major
objectives now in American hands.

While its two companion battalions in the 35th Infantry moved against the Sea
Horse, the 2d Battalion had stayed a mile back to complete the difficult job
begun by the 132d Infantry in December: clearing the Gifu area. By 10 January
the battalion estimated it was facing a lone enemy strongpoint held by one hundred
troops with ten machine guns. Two days later, with the Japanese defenders surrounded
but offering still more resistance, the regiment doubled the estimate of enemy
strength in the objective. After three attempts to break into the area, Colonel
McClure relieved the 2d Battalion commander on the 16th and prepared new thrusts
at the strongpoint. Besides heavier artillery barrages, the Americans added
psychological operations to their arsenal. For three days from the 15th the
25th Division intelligence staff beamed Japanese-language surrender appeals
into the Gifu. But the Japanese were determined to fight to the death, and the
Americans resumed the yard-by-yard struggle against their well-prepared enemy.
On the 21st three Marine light tanks joined the assault and tipped the balance
of combat power. The next day the tanks punched through the northeast side of
the strongpoint and roared on out the south side, along the way knocking out
eight machinegun positions and opening a 200-yard hole in the enemy line. Still
unwilling to surrender, the Japanese mounted a desperate attack the night of
22-23 January. The 2d Battalion troops turned back the enemy with heavy losses
and the next morning mopped up the Gifu.

Three days after the 27th Infantry and 35th Infantry assaulted the Galloping
Horse and Sea Horse, the marines kicked off their advance along the coast. In
its first operation as a complete unit, the 2d Marine Division moved west on
a two-regiment front on 13 January. After gaining over 800 yards at a cost of
six killed and sixty-one wounded, the marines stalled on the 14th under heavy
enemy machine-gun and mortar fire from ravines to their left. Adding tanks the
next day helped little, but a new weapon - flamethrowers - proved more effective
in driving enemy crews away from weapons. By the 17th the marines had regained
their momentum. In five days of combat they killed 643 Japanese and took 71
machine guns, 3 artillery pieces, and a large quantity of rifles and ammunition.
The next day they stopped a mile west of Point Cruz to await further orders
from General Patch.

By 18 January XIV Corps had pushed two miles west of the Matanikau River and
over four miles inland. In taking the major objectives of Galloping Horse, Sea
Horse, the Gifu, and the coastal strip beyond Point Cruz, the XIV Corps killed
1,900 Japanese while losing fewer than 200 killed and 400 wounded. Enemy survivors
not yet immobilized by malaria or starvation were reeling back toward their
last stronghold on Guadalcanal, Seventeenth Army headquarters at Kokumbona.

To complete the destruction of Japanese forces on Guadalcanal, General Patch
planned a follow-up offensive to begin on 2 January. The renewed attack involved
a reorientation of XIV Corps toward a point on the coast three miles west of
the new perimeter: the village of Kokumbona. To bring his forces to bear on
Kokumbona, Patch planned to swing the 25th Division from a direct westerly axis
to a northwesterly heading. Then, as that division neared the coast, the 2d
Marine Division and other Army units between it and the 25th would have to reduce
their front. Thus, by the time the Americans reached Kokumbona, XIV Corps would
be pushing a spearpoint only two regiments wide into Japanese defenses.

Because every division in his corps had suffered substantial losses from combat
and malaria, Patch also had to reorganize his remaining

regiments. The result was the Composite Army-Marine (CAM) Division, consisting
of two Army regiments, the 147th and 182d, and one Marine, the 6th, plus artillery
battalions from both the Americal and 2d Marine Divisions. Other support would
come from Navy destroyers offshore and the 2d Marine Air Wing. The remaining
regiments from the Americal and 2d Marine Divisions would man the American perimeter
east of the Matanikau River. The CAM Division would advance west along the coast
on a 3,000yard front while the 25th Division executed its more involved swing
to the northwest toward Kokumbona.

Finally, early in January, even before his renewed offensive began, Patch assembled
a small force in an effort to ensure that no Japanese escaped Guadalcanal to
fight another day. Consisting of Company I, 147th Infantry, reinforced by one
platoon from Company M and antitank, heavy weapons, and engineer detachments
and commanded by Capt. Charles E. Beach, the unit had the mission of cutting
off a possible enemy withdrawal over a 20-mile-long native trail to the Beaufort
Bay area. Part of Beach's force sailed aboard Navy landing craft around the
western end of the island, while the remainder took a trail network into the
hills; the unit assumed its blocking force position on the trail by mid-January.

After a heavy artillery and naval gunfire bombardment, XIV Corps moved out
toward Kokumbona at 0630 on 22 January. On the corps left, the 25th Division's
161st Infantry soon bogged down in deep jungle. On the corps right, the CAM
Division ran into a heavy enemy machine-gun concentration after moving only
1,000 yards. Only the 27th Infantry (25th Division), between the 161st Infantry
and the CAM Division, made good progress, covering nearly two miles in less
than three hours.

Shortly after his division had begun its attack, General Collins noticed the
Japanese offered much less opposition than expected in his 27th Infantry sector.
Showing the initiative that would later bring him a corps command and after
the war lift him to the chief of staff's office, Collins jumped in a jeep, raced
to the front, and changed his plan of attack. Despite the danger of allowing
one regiment to advance far ahead of its neighbor-the enemy could easily surround
the forward unit-Collins perceived the Japanese were incapable of taking advantage
of his vulnerability, and he told Colonel McCulloch to push 27th Infantry as
far and as fast as possible. The 27th had already outrun its communications
wire and would soon leave its artillery support fan, but Collins still saw no
reason to wait. With signalmen frantically laying new wire and artillerymen
scrambling to displace batteries forward, the men kept going. By nightfall the
27th Infantry had gained over three miles and occupied the high ground overlooking
Kokumbona.

Along the coast the CAM Division began its attack at the same time with a three-regiment
front: the 6th Marines on the beach, the 147th Infantry in the center, and the
182d Infantry abreast of 25th Division on the left. For the first 1,000 yards
terrain posed the main problem, but soon the marines came under heavy machine-gun
and antitank fire from an estimated 250 Japanese on Hills 98 and 99.

On the morning of the 23d McCulloch's 27th Infantry pushed out of the jungle
to the beach immediately east of Kokumbona, a move which trapped the enemy pocket
holding up the CAM Division column. Then, while the CAM Division hammered the
trapped Japanese, two 27th Infantry columns, one from the east, the other from
the south, broke into Kokumbona in midafternoon. The Japanese, now more interested
in escaping farther west of the village, offered little resistance, and by late
afternoon the Americans were examining hastily abandoned Seventeenth Army documents
and equipment. The next

day CAM Division troops killed over two hundred enemy and captured three 150-mm.
guns, a light tank, and other weapons in claiming Hills 98 and 99 and moving
into Kokumbona.

Anxious to destroy the remaining Japanese before they could prepare defensive
fortifications similar to those of Gifu, General Collins sent the 27th Infantry
in pursuit beyond Kokumbona. By late afternoon on the 25th McCulloch's men had
fought through rearguard actions of varying effectiveness to reach the Poha
River, a mile west of Kokumbona. Now the campaign became a race between Japanese
survivors trying to reach possible evacuation at Cape Esperance, seventeen miles
west of the Poha River, and XIV Corps attempting to trap and annihilate them.
McCulloch's victorious but exhausted 27th Infantry stopped at the Poha while
the CAM Division moved through to join the chase. Alternating the lead attack
position, the 147th Infantry, the 182d Infantry, and the 6th Marines progressed
from one to three miles a day through weak resistance. By 8 February these units
had reached Doma Cove, nine miles beyond the Poha River and the same distance
short of Cape Esperance.

Despite the fact that Captain Beach's Beaufort Bay trail-blocking force had
seen no Japanese since January, General Patch still saw the possibility of an
enemy escape from the west end of the island. In a second effort to deny the
enemy that option, Patch assembled a task force around the 2d Battalion, 132d
Infantry, and sent it around the west end of the island by Navy landing craft
to Verahue, ten miles southwest of Cape Esperance. Commanded by Col. Alexander
M. George, the force began moving north along the coast on 2 February with the
intention of meeting the CAM Division sometime in the next few days. Though
the Japanese discovered George's troops and surmised their mission, they offered
little opposition; George's men had more trouble pushing their supply trucks
through mud and jungle. But on 7 February a Japanese rifleman found a prime
target, wounding Colonel George. Lt. Col. George F. Ferry took over, and by
the 8th his men stood less than two miles from Cape Esperance. The next day
the 1st Battalion, 161st Infantry, swept over six miles west through fast dissolving
opposition while Ferry's battalion moved over three miles up from the southwest.
The two units met at Tenaro on Cape Esperance but found only a few stragglers.
Abandoned enemy equipment and landing craft on the beach explained the empty
trap: the Japanese had evacuated most of those who had reached Cape Esperance,
about 13,000 troops in all, according to prisoners of war.

Analysis

Victory on Guadalcanal brought important strategic gains to the Americans and
their Pacific allies but at high cost. Combined with the American-Australian victory
at Buna on New Guinea, success in the Solomons turned back the Japanese drive
toward Australia and staked out a strong base from which to continue attacks against
Japanese forces, especially those at Rabaul, the enemy's main base in the South
Pacific. Most important for future operations in the Pacific, the Americans had
stopped reacting to Japanese thrusts and taken the initiative themselves. These
gains cost the Americans 1,592 killed in action and 4,183 wounded, with thousands
more disabled for varying periods by disease. Entering the campaign after the
amphibious phase, the two Army divisions lost 550 killed and 1,289 wounded. For
the Japanese, losses were even more traumatic: 14,800 killed in battle, another
9,000 dead from disease, and about 1,000 taken prisoner. On Guadalcanal General
Hyakutake's troops gave American fighting men a chilling introduction to the character
of the Japanese soldier: willing to fight to the death rather than surrender.
Both navies lost twenty-four ships during the campaign but with a smaller industrial
base to replace them, Japanese losses were more significant. Even more costly
to Japan was the loss of over six hundred aircraft and pilots.

U.S. Army-Navy coordination began poorly due in part to different views of
the campaign's purpose. Ground commanders saw the campaign as an amphibious
operation with the normal division of joint responsibilities. That is, naval
forces would secure the seas around the objective for as long as it took ground
forces to clear Guadalcanal of enemy. But higher Navy commanders viewed the
operation as more of a raid than a formal amphibious campaign. They reserved
the right to react to enemy naval operations as they saw fit without offering
uninterrupted fire support to forces ashore, and they acted on that view by
leaving Guadalcanal waters twice, in August and October. Later, Army and Navy
commanders in the theater arrived at methods of operation generally satisfactory
for the initial effort in a major war. For Army tactical leaders, Navy support
proved most valuable when ground units operated close enough to the coast that
destroyers' guns could reach into the jungled ravines so well fortified by the
Japanese. Navy and Marine air support was always welcome but not always well
aimed. On one occasion a dive bomber dropped ordnance on an infantry unit advancing
toward Galloping Horse. Fortunately, such incidents proved the rare exception
in close air support missions.

Intelligence about the island of Guadalcanal and Japanese forces on the island
proved inadequate throughout the campaign. Before the effort began, the best
information on terrain and soil conditions came from missionaries and planters
expelled by the Japanese. But the recollections of these sincere but untrained
observers were often of dubious quality, most of them more impressionistic than
factual. As a result, ground commanders had to fight on Guadalcanal without
accurate maps.

Once the fighting began, information continued to come from a jerrybuilt system
of the most and least sophisticated methods available. At one end of the spectrum
was the highly developed effort to intercept and to decipher enemy naval radio
traffic. At the other was a network of "coastwatchers," native and Western informers
in the jungle notifying the Americans by radio of Japanese ship and troop movements.
In between, Generals Harmon, Vandegrift, and Patch could apply a number of military
methods, including aerial photographic reconnaissance. On Guadalcanal the coastwatchers
performed valuable service, but they could not be permanently integrated into
military and naval intelligence systems. While no one doubted the courage of
the coastwatchers, their communications with the ground commanders were indirect
and intermittent, and they often had little more than an extremely localized
view of the situation.

Even in their estimates of the situation on the ground, the four American division
commanders in the campaign frequently underestimated the forces they faced,
either in size or strength of fortification. The most grievous example occurred
at the Gifu, where an enemy pocket originally estimated at 100 men with 10 crew-served
weapons turned out to contain over 500 with 52 large weapons. The defenders
ultimately held off five American battalions for a month, delaying the advance
west long enough for the Japanese to evacuate 13,000 men from the island.

In their first combat experience, XIV Corps infantrymen carried out their missions
with the mix of enthusiasm, hesitation, and incompetence characteristic of inexperienced
troops. In the early stages of the campaign the troops allowed the Japanese
to pin them down too often with light weapons. Compounding the error, commanders
on the scene showed reluctance to resume the attack without a heavy artillery
barrage. While this pattern of behavior may have faithfully conformed to contemporary
doctrine, it played to a particular strength of the enemy. Artillery delays
used up daylight hours, and the Japanese soon learned that American commanders
did not like to initiate assaults in the last two or three hours before sunset.
In contrast, the Japanese seemed to relish the onset of darkness and relied
extensively on night movement to mount counterattacks and to position assault
units and supporting arms for the next day. Until American soldiers stopped
viewing sunset as the end of the tactical day and gained more expertise in night
operations, they would continue to take unnecessary losses at the hands of their
more experienced enemy.

Sloppy execution of routine infantry techniques cost some units unnecessary
casualties. While approaching the Sea Horse on 10 January, Company K of the
35th Infantry began crossing a stream before properly checking the site or placing
covering weapons on the flanks. With half the company on one bank and half on
the other, the Japanese fired on the disorganized and vulnerable unit. Careful
application of the basic principles of tactical movement, a responsibility of
company grade officers and NCOs, would have prevented this disaster. Instead,
it took two posthumous Medal of Honor performances to save the day for this
company.

On another occasion a badly handled communication cost the 25th Division valuable
time. During attacks on the Gifu strongpoint on 15 January, the executive officer
of the 2d Battalion, 35th Infantry, ordered one platoon of Company G to withdraw.
The order rapidly spread by word of mouth, and soon the entire battalion withdrew,
costing the unit a full day's advance.

The jungle environment of Guadalcanal forced Americans to fight at very close
quarters, a difficult but realistic adjustment to make, for subsequent campaigns
in the Pacific would present the same conditions. Enemy positions usually were
not visible until attacking troops had closed within fifty feet. The Japanese
proved masters of using natural materials found in the jungle to build strong,
as well as nearly invisible, fortified positions. Units which thought they had
discovered one or two machine-gun positions often found themselves attacking
half a dozen or more. And once a network of positions was identified, the bunkers-some
with reinforcing logs up to two feet in diameter-proved impermeable to all but
direct hits by the largest caliber ordnance. Nevertheless, XIV Corps troops
did not hesitate to attack such positions and in so doing innovated effective
techniques against them, including flamethrowers to reach into narrow openings.

Fire support in various forms-air, naval, and field artillery-remained plentiful
throughout the campaign, although in the early weeks air squadrons were occupied
with enemy aircraft. Japanese survivors expressed surprise at the duration of
preparatory fires. Even a single battalion attacking a minor position on the
way to a major objective could call for as much as half an hour's fire. Especially
effective in disorienting enemy troops was time-on-target artillery fire, which
made extremely difficult the detection of American battery locations, essential
for counterbattery fire missions. But American infantrymen found that plentiful
artillery support did not translate into an immediate reduction in enemy opposition.
Elimination of enemy bunkers required direct hits, a low percentage result for
most types of fire support, including air strikes even when pilots could see
targets. As assaults moved deeper inland, the terrain of Guadalcanal began to
affect fire support. Artillery fire frequently overshot enemy positions in deep
ravines or on steep hillsides. A field expedient proved partially effective:
propping antitank weapons and pack howitzers against steep slopes to achieve
higher angles of fire.

One type of fire support-tanks-did not play a major role on Guadalcanal. Although
the few tanks present occasionally proved valuable in reducing enemy bunkers,
neither Marine nor Army forces had enough tanks on the island to mount sizable
tank-infantry assaults. Nor did the terrain of Guadalcanal permit the maneuver
of armored columns. Army commanders and troops would have to find more level
battlefields to learn armorinfantry coordination. Another type of tracked vehicle-the
bulldozerperformed more valuable service for the XIV Corps in the long run by
assisting the engineers in airfield and road construction.

Supply proved a major problem throughout the campaign, although the character
of the issue changed as the battle continued. In the early stages of the campaign
the perennial military problem of supply volume threatened to limit operations.
But once the Army-Marine invasion force secured the Henderson Field perimeter
and began to move inland, the delivery of supplies became the larger difficulty.
Without port facilities, supplies reached the troops only after a series of
timeconsuming and labor-intensive equipment transfers. Supplies were first unloaded
from Navy ships offshore into lighters for the trip to the beach. There American
service support personnel transferred the tonnage to trucks that hauled it inland
to several dumps on roads under construction. From the dumps supplies had to
be hand carried, by both Americans and native laborers, to using units. As the
fighting moved farther inland the distance between dumps and front line lengthened
and road building could not progress as fast as assault units advanced, especially
when Japanese forces began to withdraw to their evacuation points.

American troops temporarily solved the distribution problem by using the many
streams and rivers on the island. Loading supplies into small boats, some of
them captured Japanese craft, Americans pushed the craft through the water as
close to the tactical units as possible. Not described in any field manual,
the transport expedient called forth a linguistic innovation: "pusha-maru,"
combining an English verb and the Japanese suffix attached to ships' names.

Several troublesome aspects of Army performance on Guadalcanal could not be
addressed by more training or troop innovation. Improvements in some areas would
have to wait on technological and organizational developments. Ship-to-shore
logistics did not keep up with operations ashore because of a shortage of amphibian
tractors and landing craft equipped with drop-down bow ramps. Reserving such
craft for assault echelons forced the laborious series of unloadings and reloadings
that delayed receipt of essential supplies at the fighting fronts. Solution
of this multifaceted problem called for a high degree of joint cooperation,
for it touched on Navy procedures of embarkation and debarkation as well as
Army methods of land transportation and road building. An improved technological
base for combat operations in the Pacific held the promise of significantly
reducing the cost in time and casualties of taking enemy-held islands.

The greatest single factor reducing troop effectiveness on Guadalcanal was
disease, particularly malaria. For every man who became a casualty in combat,
five fell to malaria. Until a more effective prophylaxis became available, tropical
diseases would continue to degrade the efficiency of ground operations in tropical
areas.

The Guadalcanal Campaign also made clear that whether subsequent fighting in
the Pacific took place in an Army or a Navy theater, success would depend on
a high degree of interservice cooperation. The early stages of the campaign
were dominated by Navy-Marine components of the interservice team. But as the
battle continued, Army units assumed the burden of interservice coordination
and, in the end, secured the American victory on the ground. The campaign also
made clear the scale of operations the Americans would have to mount to take
sizable island outposts from the Japanese: between fifty and one hundred thousand
troops, at least half a dozen air squadrons of high-altitude bombers, dive bombers,
and fighters, and between two and three hundred Navy ships and smaller craft
of all types. In coming months fresh Army divisions would form new interservice
teams and, applying techniques demonstrated by the XIV Corps, continue the island
march to Japan.

Further Readings

The Guadalcanal Campaign is one of the most extensively written about of all in
World War II, with more than one volume published in each of several categories:
official histories, journalistic views, and personal accounts. The authoritative
treatment remains John Miller, jr. Guadalcanal: The First Offensive (1949), a
volume in the series United States Army in World War II. Two accounts published
during the war have attracted readers from three generations: Richard Tregaskis,
Guadalcanal Diary (1943) and Ira Wolfert, Battle for the Solomons (1943). More
recent works include Robert Edward Lee, Victory at Guadalcanal (1981), Herbert
C. Merillat, Guadalcanal Remembered (1982), and Richard B. Frank, Guadalcanal
(1990).